Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1887-06-18
CLASS DESP0TISM.
THE COMING REBELLION OF
THE MONEY KINGS.
The Workers Unprepared--Wh Shall
Replace the Society and Govern.
ment of PlutOcrats plain
Signs of the Times.
Must Prepare.
BY DR.. A DOUAI.

1t cannot have escaped the atten-
ton of thinking workmen that our
exploiting classes incline more and
more towards despotism. They be-
tray prediction for monarchy.
During the reign of Napoleon Ill,
they admired and sympathized with
this monster of perfidy. Later they
admired and adored Bismarck, his
pupil and master in despotic arts,
and Matched plans for making Gen
eral U. s. Grant first lifelong presl-
dent of the United States, and after
wards emperor. They showed them
selves Indifferent to the painful
struggles of the working masses to-
ward free political institutions and
denounced the commune of Paris,
the aspirations of the German So
cial- Democracy and every popular
movement toward economical and
political independence of the masses.
But never more openly than now-a-
days.
Can this appear strange and diff
cult to explain? Is,not the employ
ment of hundreds, thousands, nay,
tens of thousands, of wages laborers
through one man or company OF
money kings a constant incentive to
despotical sentiments? Will not
the great power over the wages and
standard Of life which industry on
large scale gives to employers lead
to attempts at misuse of power?
Has not this abuse of power always
taken place when the resistance on
the part of the dependent workers
was unorganized and feeble; and
when that resistance increased, did
not always the inclination to the use
of despotic means of repression in
crease pari passu?
Well, those who never before fol-
lowed out this line of reasoning, have
now frst-rate chance of observing
the despotical turn of mind of such
men as Jay Gould, and most large
employers, of the combination of the
building trades bosses in Chicago
and elsewhere, Of the great capital
istic newspapers which counsel a
general resistance of the employing
classes, to the organization of the
workers for economical and political
purposes-an outspoken effort to
destroy trades unions and working
mems political parties. If they
could be in some measures successful
therein, who can doubt that they
would curtail the suffrage right of
workers and of the poor in general
together with the rate of wages?
Economical dependence of one
class upon the other has always in
the worlds history led to despotism
on the part of the latter, and despot-
ic power was always the means of ex-
ploitaton.
Why should we doubt that this
historical truth will be reversed in
the case of American institutions
And when we see that our employing
class has for quarter of a century
striven to break the proud spirit of
American free workers by importing
in masses Chinese wages slaves,
French Canadians, Italians, Polish
and Hungarian servile laborers; that
they have already in great measure
succeeded in subduing the coal miners
and the textile workers, the needle
workers and female wages slaves and
the railroad employees on many lines,
and strive to bribe the head men OF
the Knights of Labor and of other
organizations of workers into capl-
talistic service-when we see all that
can there be wonder that they
now increase their combined efforts
to subdue us at one fell swoop, and
that they side with the Pope and the
curia as against Catholic-Americar
freemen of McGlynn's stamp; thai